This invention relates to medical equipment, and more particularly to a safety syringe designed to prevent accidental needle stick injuries by medical personnel, particularly with respect to contaminated needles.
The ever increasing spread of diseases transmitted by blood and other bodily fluids, such as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Hepatitis B, creates a real threat to medical personnel of accidental, inadvertent, puncturing of the skin by a syringe needle, which has been in contact with an infected patient and transmittal of the often fatal disease to the unfortunate medical attendant. Despite educational programs carried by many hospitals, every day somewhere in the United States at least one nurse or a medical attendant, who comes into contact with an infected syringe needle, will become punctured by such needle, while trying to dispose of the used syringe or during any other manipulation of dirty syringes.
Various attempts have been made to resolve this problem by proposing to use a protective syringe needle guard, which would cover the needle when the syringe is not in use and prevent the needle from being exposed during those times. However, such devices are expensive to manufacture, difficult to use, requiring several steps in preparing the syringe for utilization and, so far, have not found wide acceptance in the medical profession.
The present invention has a general objective of overcoming drawbacks and shortcomings associated with the prior art and provision of an inexpensive, easy to use self-locking safety syringe.